“Yeah? She really says that?” Kate glanced at the houseboat’s kitchen-like area.
“Here.” I held out my phone. “Go ahead. Ask her.”
Kate ignored my phone and, instead, took the stack of recipes. This relieved me mightily, because what Kristen had actually said was, “There’s nothing better than coming up with a new recipe that my peeps are willing to shell out thirty bucks a pop to eat.” She might have given me a pass on the translation, but now I had a chance to prep her for the question. And if I told her approval would result in Minnie Hamilton cooking a full dinner from start to finish, she would probably have paid admission to attend.
“Some of these don’t look too horrible,” Kate said. “Can I pick?”
“Absolutely,” I said rashly, which was why we ended up in the grocery store, filling a cart with a multitude of items to make shrimp pad Thai, a recipe that happened to be on the same page as the far simpler shrimp stir fry, the dish I’d had my eye on when I’d hit the Print button.
After I’d handed over my credit card for an amount that was more expensive than going out would have been and we’d hauled everything back to the houseboat, we read over the recipe and I divvied up tasks. Kate on the sauce, me on the slicing and dicing.
But after she’d watched me almost slice my fingertips off, she forced a switch.
“Have you ever used a knife in your life?” she demanded.
“Sure,” I said, carefully dividing oil into two tiny dishes usually reserved for Eddie’s morning milk. “It’s just that I’m often thinking about something else, and that something else is almost always a lot more interesting than cutting pretty much anything.”
“I can’t believe you have a master’s,” she muttered.
Clearly she had not yet learned that advanced degrees were an inaccurate indicator of life success, but that was something she’d have to figure out for herself.
When I was in the middle of spooning out rice vinegar, I felt Kate shoot me a quick glance. “Have you talked to Deputy Wolverson about what I was saying the other day?”
“About . . . ?” Since my thoughts had been focused on what Rafe had been murmuring into my ear the previous evening, I blinked at her question.
She paused, mid-chop. “You’ve forgotten about it, haven’t you?”
“Of course not,” I said automatically as I tried to remember what she was so sure I couldn’t remember. A bit wildly, I looked around for a clue. Eddie, who was trying to wedge himself into the tiny crack between the dining bench and the wall, was no help. “It’s just I, um, haven’t had time.”
“Really?” The knife dropped onto the counter and she put her hands on her hips. “It was days ago you said you’d talk to Deputy Wolverson about my theory, that maybe Mrs. Price’s husband and Mr. Stuhler’s wife were having an affair, and they killed their spouses so they could be together without paying for a divorce.”
Ah. That. “Yes, but—”
“But what?” She was almost yelling now. “You were never going to tell him, were you? You don’t take me seriously. You never have and you never will.” She lurched away from my outstretched hand. “Leave me alone, okay? Just leave me alone.” She ran out the door, bobbing the houseboat as she jumped off.
I hurried after her, keeping her in sight as she ran down the length of the dock and took a hard right, and then another right a few yards later.
Sighing, I slowed. She was headed to Louisa and Ted Axford’s. I watched as she climbed aboard the sleek boat and lingered until I heard Louisa’s calm and reassuring voice.
“Now what?” I asked Eddie as I returned to the houseboat.
“Mrr,” he said. And he said it in a very critical way. Before I’d taken up residence with a cat, I hadn’t understood how judgmental they could be.
“Thanks so much.” I sighed. “I know I screwed up. You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.” I flopped on top of Kate’s sleeping bag. Then squirmed around a bit. “You know what? This is actually very comfortable. No wonder she likes sleeping on this.”
“Mrr.”
“Well, sure, you knew that a long time ago, didn’t you? And you were just waiting for me to acknowledge the combined wisdom of an Eddie and a seventeen-year-old.” The yellow eyes swiveled my way and I quickly added, “Sorry, that came out a little snarky, didn’t it? I apologize. I should never doubt your capabilities.”
His little kitty shoulders went up and down in a sigh, looking for all the world like an aggrieved parent who knew their offspring was lying through their teeth.
In the name of distraction, I said, “But you never answered my question. What do I do now? Is she going to talk to me anytime soon? And by ‘soon,’ what I mean is within the next decade?”
Eddie, who had been sitting on the dashboard, jumped to the floor and stalked past me.
“Okay, you’re right. What I should do is what I told her I’d do: talk to Ash about her theory that Fawn Stuhler and Dominic Price had a thing going and killed their spouses to clear the way for mutual eternal bliss. After their reception of my one-killer theory, I doubt they’ll welcome anything like that.” But I’d have to talk to them eventually, since I’d promised.
Sliding down, getting close to horizontal, I tried to consider Kate’s theory as realistic. I’d never met Fawn, but Rex had been in his late forties, so odds were reasonably good that Fawn was roughly the same age. Nicole had turned forty last winter—I remembered her talking about the surprise party her husband had given her—so Dominic was probably about that, too.
“Not that you have to be the same age to fall in love with each other,” I told Eddie. “There are lots of couples out there who are years and years apart in age.”
I started counting on my fingers. Donna’s husband hadn’t retired since he was holding out for maximum social security benefits, so he had to be at least five years younger. And I was pretty sure Uncle Everett, Aunt Frances’s first husband, had been significantly older.
“Okay, that’s only two couples, but I’m sure I could come up with more if—” I stopped, frowning. Underneath me there were sounds of a cat getting into something he shouldn’t. “Eddie, what are you doing?”
The unexplained noise continued unabated.
I slid over the edge of the bench seat and oozed onto the floor. “Please don’t tell me you’ve crawled into Kate’s luggage again,” I said, peering underneath the lowered table. “You know she hates it when you get your white hairs on her black T-shirts and your black hairs on her white T-shirts.”
A single piece of popcorn rolled out and came to a rest next to my right knee.
“Nice.” I wondered how long it had been there and decided not to think about it. “You could have eaten that and saved—”
A second piece of popcorn rolled out and stopped by my left knee. “Double nice. Thanks for your commentary on my housekeeping—”
“Mrr!”
“I said thank you. What more do you want?”
“MRR!” Eddie crawled out from the darkness, gave me a Look, and stalked off.
“Some days,” I said, watching his tail end, “it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.”
“Mrr.”
* * *
When Kate eventually returned, I was sitting on a front deck chaise, reading, with Eddie flopped across my legs. She stepped aboard, muttered an apology for leaving without telling me where she was going, and slunk inside.
“Not sure that counts as talking,” I said to Eddie. “What do you think?”
He purred, which was the exact response I’d hoped for.
I’d been texting Louisa on and off since Kate had fled for the Axfords’ greener pastures and the fun of playing with a toddler, and when Louisa had asked if I wanted Kate to apologize, I’d responded: In a perfect world, sure. But though Chilson may be paradise, it’s not perfect.